Harold Meyerson

Recent Articles

It may be just about the most inspiring sight imaginable: hundreds of thousands of people gathered in the main square of some capital city, demanding democratic self-rule. "They're doing it in many different corners of the world," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last week, "places as varied as Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan and, on the other hand, Lebanon, and rumblings in other parts of the world as well. And so this is a hopeful time." It is a process in which the United States claims more than an observer's role. The business of America, says President Bush, is spreading democracy. "The leaders of governments with long habits of control need to know: To serve your people, you must learn to trust them," Bush said in his inaugural address this January. "Start on this journey of progress and justice and America will walk at your side." Unless, of course, you're Mexican. Apparently, there are several kinds of capital city rallies. There are those in Kiev, where multitudes turned out...

At first glance, it looked to be a triumph of the human spirit. There, at a joint news conference last week in Jerusalem, stood the patriarchs of the rival faiths of the Middle East -- Israel's chief rabbis, the deputy mufti of Jerusalem, leaders of the Catholic and Armenian churches -- Jews, Muslims, and Christians, together at last. And the cause that had united them? A gay pride festival scheduled for August in Jerusalem. The leaders of religious orthodoxy had come together to help ban the festival. Interreligious harmony reigned as historic enmities gave way to a common loathing of homosexuals. We have seen the future of the past. The photograph of the clerics that ran in the newspapers may some day be viewed as an artifact of the founding of the Orthodox International. Globalization is bringing modernization and the demand for equality to the doorsteps of the most traditionalist societies and enclaves. Orthodox faiths are not accustomed to interreligious cooperation -- there is...

Spreading democracy is one thing. But do we really want America to be known for spreading the pricing practices of our drug companies? In Guatemala, the United States has become the sales rep for the pharmaceutical industry. Citing urgent public health concerns, the Guatemalan legislature enacted a law last year that permitted the marketing of generic drugs alongside their brand-name equivalents. Citing the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), whose ratification congressional committees will begin to consider next week, the U.S. trade representative then told the Guatemalans that any such drug legislation would stop CAFTA dead in its tracks. If the five Central American nations (plus the Dominican Republic) that had signed CAFTA wanted it ratified, Guatemala would have to repeal the new law. Reluctantly, Guatemala obliged. Though the rules laid down by the World Trade Organization permit generic competition, CAFTA imposes a five- to10-year waiting period on generic...

For a while last week, Illinois was home to the kind of union-against-union labor war that America hasn't seen since American Federation of Labor (AFL) unions and Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) unions used to clobber each other while fighting for new members, in the days before the two federations merged 50 years ago. Hundreds of organizers from both the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) were pounding on doors in rival efforts to persuade the state's 48,000 child-care workers to vote to join their respective unions. What made the campaign exceptional, however, was that the SEIU was able to enlist hundreds of additional organizers from other unions to pound the pavement on its behalf. “We had almost 200 organizers today from the UFCW [United Food and Commercial Workers], the Teamsters, and UNITE HERE [formerly the Union of Needletrades, Textiles and Industrial Employees and the Hotel...

For Tom DeLay, Terri Schiavo came along just in the nick of time. "One thing that God brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America," DeLay told a group of Christian conservatives last Friday. And what, exactly, is going on in the United States? "Attacks against the conservative movement, against me and against many others," DeLay told his flock. So God has now thrown in with DeLay in his efforts to pack the House ethics committee with his allies so that he no longer need be the subject of the scrutiny and censure of his peers. I don't think this is what Martin Buber meant when he referred to an "I-Thou" relationship with the Lord, but I could be mistaken. For Bill Frist, Terri Schiavo came along at an opportune moment. After inspecting some videotapes made by her parents, the doctor announced that the examinations by court-appointed physicians were erroneous in concluding that Schiavo has been in a persistent vegetative state for the...